31% of B2B Marketers Still Struggling to Create a Unified View of Customer Data

As marketers focus on personalizing the customer experience, new research suggests that they are turning to new technology, data, and analytics to support their efforts.

Salesforce recently published the eighth edition of its “State of Marketing” report, and statistics indicated 31% of B2B marketers still find it challenging to obtain a unified view of customer data. The majority of respondents (83%) said that they are currently using transactional data, while the same percentage are utilizing known digital identities. About 77% are using second-party data.

However, marketers are increasingly turning to technology to capture and leverage data. About 90% claim that they are now using a customer relationship management system, while 89% are utilizing an account-based marketing platform. Nearly 62% are using artificial intelligence.

Planning for a Data-Driven Marketing Future

Despite the challenges associated with gathering and leveraging data, previous research indicates that marketers are finding it increasingly useful for the customer experience.

Ascend2 released its “Using Data-Driven Marketing to Predict Future Performance” report, and statistics suggested that the majority of marketers (48%) are now finding data-driven marketing to be most useful for customer experience/journey mapping. Additionally, 40% now claim that their budget for data-driven marketing is “increasing moderately” as they look ahead to the next 12 months. Nearly 9% stated that it will be “increasing significantly.”

Over the course of the next year, most marketers (58%) said they they believe improving the customer experience through data-driven marketing is going to become most critical to decision-making.